Never again do I want to have that many pictures of bladder cancer saved to my hard drive.
Luckily, the test went well. Shockingly well. You know, before this unit, I always focused on nailing the big concepts while keeping the short-term memorization to a minimum – and that’s all well and good – but holy crap, I don’t think I realized just how many cheap points there were to be had by just memorizing the damn slides.
Also, I added 2 new pages: An archival page with links to the posts that most accurately document Med School So Far, and a Clinical Mnemonics page.
Clinical mnemonics are strange things. I feel a little guilty for using them – I guess I feel like I should have all of this solidly internalized before I have the right to try it on patients – but damnit, the only times I don’t forget to take crucial elements of the H&P are when I’m using mnemonics.
I don’t even like most mnemonics, but I guess until I’ve seen a few hundred patients, it may be the only way I’ll remember things. I’m getting incredibly tired of starting a case write-up, then realizing I’m going to have to write “Not Assessed” for 50% of it. So frustrating.
I mean, seriously – I recently forgot to do a cerebellar exam. On a person whose chief complaint was “I had a stroke”. (And to think that I thought I had the physical exam memorized).
An M2 laughed when I told him that story, and he said ‘Hey, you’re looking at the bright guy who forgot to check CVA tenderness on a guy with pyelonephritis’. Since he actually is a bright guy, that made me feel a lot better.
Action Potential 